Father recalls poignant final moment with slain daughter

Father's grief

Michael Tercha, Chicago Tribune

Jose Colon ties balloons to the flagpole outside Roberto Clemente High School in remembrance of his 18-year-old daughter, Frances Colon, who was shot and killed Friday night. Colon was the third student from Clemente killed this year.

Jose Colon ties balloons to the flagpole outside Roberto Clemente High School in remembrance of his 18-year-old daughter, Frances Colon, who was shot and killed Friday night. Colon was the third student from Clemente killed this year. (Michael Tercha, Chicago Tribune)

The father of a Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School student killed Friday spent Monday morning putting up a memorial to his daughter at the North Side school. Later that morning, he remembered one of the last things he did with his daughter.

It was Friday afternoon, Jose Colon Jr. recalled, and he and his daughter Frances were watching President Barack Obama speak at Hyde Park Academy on the city's South Side. The topic of that speech: The same kind of gun violence that would end his daughter's life later that night.

"She said, 'About time they do something with the gun thing,' " he said, adding that Obama and other elected officials need to "make these people more afraid" to shoot each other by making tougher penalties.

Frances Colon, of the 2900 block of West Armitage Avenue, was shot about 7:05 p.m. Friday in the 1100 block of North Pulaski Road, according to police. She was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 8:16 p.m.

Colon is the third student at Roberto Clemente to be killed this school year, said Clemente's principal Marcey Sorensen.

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